Katrina studied me. “I don’t suppose you’re a Mafia debt collector out to break Skippy’s legs?”
“No.” I stopped myself on the edge of ma’am.
“One can only hope.” She looked disappointed and reached for the coffee box on the glass-topped table, through which I could see her legs crossed demurely at the ankles. A lot of time and money had gone into those legs.
She stared at the box. “Must be a dark, disgusting secret from the past then. I always knew Skippy was hiding his shame.”
“Yes.”
Mimi inhaled and raised one hand while Katrina held her breath and lowered both hands. I clarified. “Except I doubt Skippy is hiding the shame from you because I doubt he knows.”
Katrina’s face broke into a smile. “This is great.”
“It is no such thing,” Mimi said. “He’s a shyster, Katrina. Look at that silly grin. Pretty soon he’s going to ask for money.”
“No, I’m not,” I said.
Katrina slid toward me on the couch, which made her shorts ride up. “Tell us the secret this minute or Mimi and I shall take you down on the floor and torture you.”
I decided she was a fireball. Certain somewhat small women are fireballs and they make me nervous. Being tortured by this particular fireball might be interesting—or if she was my stepmother it could spill over into weird—but I didn’t see any reason to keep secrets. I mean, the men raped Lydia. If fallout came from exposure, I sure wasn’t the one to stop it.
I tried to meet her eyes. “Mr. Gaines, Mr. Saunders, and Mr. Prescott were part of five football players who, uh, had group sex with my mother and created me.”
A girl appeared in the doorway that led to a back patio type place. She was tall, big boned, and in her early twenties. I couldn’t tell you how she would sound, but I knew she tasted like lemon meringue pie.
“I’m headed for the pool, Mom,” she said. She had light blond hair, which I don’t normally go for, and wore a white terry-cloth robe open at the middle to show a sky blue one-piece bathing suit.
I turned to see which woman she was calling Mom. The girl looked at Mimi, who had her lips puckered as if she’d eaten something rotten.
“What’s wrong?” the girl asked.
Katrina recovered first. “This boy says he’s your half brother, Gilia.”
“Might be,” I corrected. “The odds are one out of five.”
Gilia studied me with frank, blue eyes. Shannon could pull off that honest yet wanting nothing look. Must be an attitude the new generation of women developed because I don’t remember it from my day.
She said, “I didn’t know Daddy was married before.”
Mimi made a choked sound. “He wasn’t. It’s a scandalous lie. This villain has come to destroy our home.”
I said, “That’s a classic overreaction, Mrs. Saunders. I’m not here to affect your home in any way.”
Her face was awful. The woman had lost all reserve. “How dare you make accusations at Cameron. My husband is an honorable gentleman.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Saunders.”
Katrina suddenly stood up. “Don’t be sorry. Skip has a scandal coming. That pinhead’s been dipping his wick ever since I married him.”
I glanced over at Gilia. She stood uncommitted as a fence post.
“I don’t see any call for scandal,” I said.
Katrina laughed. “I can’t wait to see how Mr. Wheeler-Dealer handles this. First, he’ll offer you money to change the story.” She grabbed my arm. “Don’t take it.”
“I don’t need money.”
“Then he’ll threaten you with hired violence. Skip’s too wimpy to touch you himself.”
Mimi’s voice was up near hysteria. “Cameron does not dip his wick.”
“Oh, he does too,” Katrina said.
“And Cameron does not deserve scandal. You. Leave my house this instant.”
I stood up from the ottoman, but Katrina didn’t release my arm. “I’m sorry to have upset you,” I said.
“Out.”
Katrina’s fingernails dug into my skin. “Don’t make him go. I want all the sick, ugly details of how your Cameron and my Skippy soiled this poor boy’s mother.”
At the word soiled, Mimi buried her face in her hands and sobbed. I hadn’t expected to have this effect on people. I hadn’t thought beyond the fathers and me, but now it sank in that others were involved—innocent strangers who’d never raped anybody.
“I better go,” I said.
Gilia looked from her mother to me.
I said, “Nice to have met you.”
Her lips parted, but she didn’t speak.
“You ain’t my kid, you’re too scrawny.”
Babe Carnisek was big—big as Billy’s coffin case. Even leaned back in a recliner with his hands curled in his lap he appeared in the upper-six-foot range and near three hundred pounds. He hadn’t gone to fat, either. A well-dinged free-weight set and lift bench filled the gap where the breakfast nook should have been.
“But you did have relations with my mother,” I said.
“I humped her, if that’s what you mean. I was number two behind that bastard Skip, before she got wore out.”
Babe’s wife, Didi, came in from the kitchen, carrying three ice teas on an A&W Root Beer tray. “Who got wore out, honey?”
“His ma. A bunch of us screwed this junior high chick and Pee Wee here says we got her pregnant. Says I might be his dad.” Babe was paying more attention to the Washington-Detroit game on TV than to his wife or me. Washington was up 21-8—not so close a game as should have pulled him away from the possibility of a son.
Didi offered from the tray. “He’s too shrimpy, Babe.” She put a finger on her chin and studied me like a Food Lion steak. “You couldn’t be his father; unless your mama was a midget. Is your mama a midget?”
“No, ma’am. She’s about the same height as you.”
“I wish you was his boy. Babe always wanted a son, but we can’t have any, on account of the steroids.”
“Look at that pussy block,” Babe said. “I can block better’n that, without my knees.”
Didi sat down across from me on the vinyl-covered couch. “Babe had a scholarship to Virginia Tech, until he ruint both knees playing softball.”
The tea had enough sugar to send a horse into diabetic shock. “If you aren’t my father, which one do you think is?”
The Detroit quarterback fumbled the snap. “God almighty,” Babe said, “I hate quarterbacks. Every ratty little one should be horsewhipped.” He looked over at me. “Skip Prescott or the nigger, I imagine. Other than them we’re all linemen.”
“Billy Gaines was an end.”
“Tight end. And high school teams didn’t pass much in the fifties. Guilford County ran a T formation with Billy blocking the left side.”
“Was he any good?”
Babe snorted. “Billy’s blind as a bat. Mostly he stood in people’s way.”
“So you think it’s Skip or Jake.”
“I was you I’d hope for the nigger. I’d rather have a nigger daddy than Skip Prescott any day.”
“You don’t like Mr. Prescott?”
Babe went back to the game, but Didi clucked a couple times and gave the explanation. “Skip hired Babe the first summer out of high school, then said he’d fire him if he didn’t play on the Dixieland Sporting Goods softball team.”
“And Babe blew his knees,” I said.
I looked at Babe, who was pretending to watch the game. But I could tell he was thinking about what might have been.
Didi sipped her tea. She was pretty in a Kmart kind of way. I’ll bet she’d never been gone down on in her life. “Then Skip told Babe if he took these blue pills he’d grow strong and be able to play football again.”